Who is Harriet Miers?

From Jason Leopold's article on Wedneaday, we have learned the former White House Counsel Harriet Miers knew about the White House missing emails and she was in some shape and form connected in the Plamegate.

Here is some of the highlights about Harriet Miers and her loyalites to Bush:

1. Politics
She contributed to Bush and to the Bush-Cheney recount fund that helped Bush get selected to the White House over Gore in 2000 [via Newsweek]. About 62% of her political giving is associated with efforts to advance Bush's political career [via USA Today].
She has made campaign contributions to Democrats (Al Gore, Lloyd Bentsen, DNC) back in 1988, but has given much more to Republicans - and exclusively so after 1994 [via Americablog, Newsweek and Slingshot].

2. Legal Experience and Judiciary

She has never been a judge and has no experience arguing cases before the Supreme Court. However, she would join a long line of past SCOTUS judges who did not have prior judicial experience [via Scotusblog, FindLaw and Talk Left].

Her legal experience appears to be thin [via Americablog]. Westlaw records show that she has only argued 4 cases in Texas state courts in 30 years [via Is That Legal]. Commenter Kenneth points out that it is quite possible that she argued many more cases which were not reported online. She seems to have argued only 3 cases in 30 years at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (and lost all three) [via Is That Legal].

3. Executive Power, National Security and Civil Liberties

She was staff secretary and briefed Bush at his ranch on August 6, 2001 - which was when Bush decided to stay asleep at the wheel after reading the PDB warning that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the U.S. [via Eschaton]

She likely had some degree of involvement with the Bush White House response to the Valerie Plame identity leak probe [via Georgia10 at Dailykos].

She provided significant guidance on the issues of Presidential powers during wars, torture, etc. [via Georgia10 at Dailykos].

It is clear that one of the principal reasons for her cronyist nomination is to prevent judicial oversight over Bush's Executive powers in the unending "War on Terror" [via Slingshot, Mahablog and The Hill].

More...

Miers handed Bush the August 6, 2001, briefing memoWhen announcing Miers as Bush's Supreme Court nominee on Monday, October 3, 2005, the New York Times published a photo of Miers "going over a briefing paper with President George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch in August 2001, the caption reads," Editor & Publisher Staff reported October 4, 2005. "USA Today and the Boston Globe carried the photo labeled simply 2001, but many other newspapers ran the picture in print or on the Web with a more precise date: Aug. 6, 2001."

"Does that date sound familiar?," E&P asks. "Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous 'PDB' that declared that Osama Bin Laden was 'determined' to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?

"As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times," E&P wrote. "An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency 'Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial 'presidential daily briefing' hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.'"

4. Contraversies...

"Miers was also Chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission and responsible for a chain of events involving GTech, which ran the Texas Lottery, former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes, and accusations of kick-backs and illegal contracts. Ben Barnes, who says he helped George Bush get into the National Guard. His original deposition on that subject was given in 1999, during this Texas Lottery Commission investigation, and has been permanently sealed."